


Still Life

by Jackkel Dragon (jackkel_dragon)



Series: Jackkel's Corpse Party Fanfic [14]
Category: Corpse Party (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackkel_dragon/pseuds/Jackkel%20Dragon





	Still Life

“Naana? Naana?”

I pushed the door all the way open and walked into the second wing that had suddenly appeared outside the school. Naana hadn’t been anywhere in the main building, so she must have gotten lost in the second wing. Or worse… but I didn’t want to think about that yet.

I clutched my head the moment I stepped over the threshold. This whole school felt cold and wrong, but just walking into this building gave me a splitting headache. It wasn’t helped by the whining that started as soon as Chihaya followed me in.

“My head hurts! Nari, my head hurts–”

“Deal with it, Chihaya!” I spat out as I forced myself to stand. “You think I’m doing any better?”

I immediately regretted that decision, as Chihaya only made things worse by starting to sob. She ran over to the shoe racks and sat down against them, crying her eyes out before she even got there.

This was really annoying, how Chihaya would break down over the smallest things. If Naana were here, she’d find some way to deal with it. What was I supposed to do without her to keep Chihaya in line?

I gritted my teeth against the pain in my head and looked around. There were hallways leading in two separate directions from the lobby, but a sealed door blocked one of them. With our luck, the door won’t budge.

As I walked around to get my bearings, the pain in my head began to subside until it was a dim throbbing rather than a sharp stabbing feeling. I wouldn’t want to stay here long, but I’d have a chance to find Naana without keeling over in pain.

Well, rather, I’d have a chance if I could convince Chihaya to move…

I looked at her, sobbing like a baby by the shoe racks. I briefly considered leaving her there and coming back after I’d found Naana, but I discarded that idea quickly. Chihaya wouldn’t last two seconds alone. I walked over to her and knelt next to her.

“Chihaya, we have to find Naana and get out of here before something bad happens. I need you to follow me now.”

Chihaya kept sniffling, but she stood up and nodded. I stood and led her to the open hallway.

We explored the hallway, trying every door and checking every body for a sign of Naana. Chihaya still wouldn’t even go near corpses, so I had to turn over the dead bodies of kids our age all on my own. I started to worry when I realized I was getting used to the feel of dead flesh and the smell of decay…

“Nari, this room is open.”

I looked from the body of the boy I’d been searching to see that Chihaya was holding a door open and peeking inside. I walked over and read the sign above the door: “Music Room.”

“Stay at the door, Chihaya. Let me know if something comes down the hallway.”

Chihaya nodded slowly. “O-okay.”

I stepped into the room and looked around. It was a bit darker than the rest of the school, but my eyes started to adjust after a moment. There were plenty of overturned desks and gaps in the floor, making the idea of getting around the room seem challenging. On the other end of the room was a piano. Not much of a music room if that’s all there was…

“Keep an eye out, Chihaya!” I shouted back to the door. “I’m going further in.”

Chihaya sniffled. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

I grumbled and turned around. “Chihaya, the other door didn’t open and this room isn’t that big. You can wait at the door for two minutes by yourself.”

Chihaya turned away from me, but I could tell she was starting to cry again. I was getting really tired of this. We’re in a haunted school, things are going to be a bit different than her perfect life at home!

Annoyed, I started navigating the desks to get across a gap in the floor to reach the other end of the room. I realized after I had crossed that some shadows had obscured a number of corpses. Wonderful.

I tapped a few keys on the piano as I passed by to examine the corpses. It sounded like it hadn’t been tuned in decades. I heard a squeal of fright from across the room, but ignored it. Chihaya needs to realize not everything is worth getting upset over.

When I got to the corpses, I examined them more closely. Their throats had been slit, by the look of their rotting flesh and the bloodstains under them. One of them had a rusty knife in their right hand, positioned as if… they had cut their own throat.

I felt nauseous after that realization, but I almost welcomed that feeling. It meant I hadn’t gone entirely numb from the death here yet.

There was a message written on the wall behind the corpses, and I squinted to make it out. It seemed to have been written in blood. It read: “When you realize hope is an illusion, play a dirge on the piano and end it yourself. They say that will lessen the pain… which is all we can truly hope for in this hell.”

I shook my head and stepped back. This wasn’t going to help me find Naana. This room was just a dead end.

Retracing my steps and hurdling over the desks, I called out to Chihaya so she wouldn’t wet herself when I showed up. “Chihaya! I’m coming back!”

There wasn’t a response, not even a whimper or a sob. Finally, she gets a hold of herself.

I walked out the door and turned around to see where Chihaya was standing to find nothing. Did she really wander off on her own?…

“Chihaya? Where did you go?”

A jolt of fear shot through me. First Hikari, then Naana, then Chihaya… they were all gone. I was alone.

“Chihaya? Talk to me!” I ran down the hallway and heard footsteps as I passed a stairwell. I turned to look up the stairs. “Chihaya?”

This was starting to freak me out. It was obvious that no good came from being alone in this place, and now everyone I knew was on their own. Naruse and Kazane could probably handle themselves, but Hikari? Naana? Chihaya?

I ran up the stairs, hoping to catch up to whoever had gone up there. “Chihaya, this isn’t a game! Come back here so we can look for Naana together!”

The footsteps didn’t stop. They sounded like a girl’s footsteps, so I was pretty sure it was Chihaya. The relaxed gait told me she wasn’t afraid like usual, though.

I kept running up into the second floor and followed the sound of the footsteps. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t see far enough down the hallway to identify the girl.

“Chihaya, hold on! Come back here!”

The girl turned and walked into an open room. I ran up to the door and shoved it open, looking frantically for Chihaya. She was going to get herself hurt at this rate…

Moving through the room, I noticed it was really dark. There were easels placed around the center of the room, as far as I could tell. In the apparent center stood the girl I’d followed. Moving closer, I confirmed it was Chihaya.

“Why wouldn’t you answer me, Chihaya?” I grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to address her directly.

Just then, the seemingly broken lights right above us flashed on and I heard a slamming noise behind me, probably the door. Just before the light temporarily blinded me, I saw an unnaturally wide grin on Chihaya’s face.

Blinking and rubbing my eyes, I turned to see that the door had shut behind us when the lights turned on. I also noticed that the only light on was the one above us… like a spotlight on a stage.

“Nari… I couldn’t find Nana.”

I sighed and looked at Chihaya. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Don’t run off like that again, okay? We should stick together.”

Chihaya lowered her head. I considered shaking her, but decided that wouldn’t help at all. If she needed to cry now, I might as well let her.

“There’s no way out of here, Nari.”

I frowned at Chihaya. “Not this again. Look, if you want to give up, you can just wait here. I’ll bring back Naana and she’ll explain to you what we’ll do to get out.”

Chihaya shook her head, but didn’t raise it to look at me. “No, there’s no way out of this room. She told me… the door only opens… when she sees a piece of art she likes.”

“'She?’ Who are you talking about?” I grabbed Chihaya’s shoulder again. “Did you see someone else? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I tried to call you… but you were still playing the piano.”

I mentally slapped myself. I’ve gotten so used to Chihaya’s whining that I almost got her into danger.

“What did she look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look. She had this long black hair in front of her face. But I think she wore a red dress.”

I scratched my head. “A red… dress? Not a uniform?”

Chihaya walked over to one of the easels and picked something up. I tried to get a look at it, but she hid it behind her. Her head was tilted so that her hair left her eyes in shadow.

“She said she wanted something for her friends to draw still-life pictures from.”

I looked around. If this girl in the red dress was going to lock us out until we made something for a still-life, she might be waiting for a while. There were only materials for painting and sketches, not sculptures.

“It took me until just a minute ago to figure out what she meant. My dad used to make these really bad puns… it’s kinda like one of those.”

I rubbed my forehead. The throbbing in my head since coming into the second wing was intensifying into a ringing feeling. “How so?…”

“The girl wants something to draw a still-life from. But most living people have heartbeats and breathe. So a still-life…”

I felt a stabbing pain in my chest and gasped out. Chihaya was grinning widely, her pupils dilated and her eyes bloodshot.

“…Is someone dead!”

I pushed Chihaya away, and felt another pang in my chest as whatever she had stabbed me with was ripped out at an odd angle. I looked up to see that Chihaya was already back on her feet, a bloody chisel in her hand.

“I’ll make the perfect still-life sculpture for her, then she’ll let me out for sure!”

I backed away and held up my hands. “Chihaya, stop! What are you doing?!”

I tripped on a loose board while backing away from Chihaya and landed on my butt, nearly blinding myself as I looked straight up into the light fixture above us.

“I’m putting those years of art classes to good use!” Chihaya pounced on me and stabbed me in the eye. My hands reflexively shot up to pull the chisel out, but Chihaya swatted them away like my arms were made of wet noodles.

I felt Chihaya fiddling with the chisel inside my eye, tears and blood sealing my good eye shut. Then, I heard a tearing sound as Chihaya ripped my eye out of its socket. I knew this was the case because she dropped it into my mouth once she pulled it off her chisel.

“You want to know why I picked this placement, Nari?”

I tried to spit out my eye, but a hand forced my mouth closed. My mind was starting to shut down with the overload of pain in the last few seconds, but I could still listen to Chihaya.

“You kept saying things to make me cry, so I thought it’d make sense to have you choking on an eyeball. I’d have used actual tears, but our art class taught us about symbolism last week so I think it’ll work.”

Was this how I’d die?… Killed by one of my friends under a spotlight, to be used as the basis of paintings…

“Before I get carried away with the details… I should make sure my art fits the assignment!”

I felt that stabbing pain in my chest again, then I felt my skin being cut apart from my collarbone down to my waist. I didn’t even have the strength to resist anymore, and my limbs felt like they were weighed down.

“It’s a still-life, right? So… next I need to make sure everything is… still.”

I felt a sharp pain within my chest, followed by the feeling of blood spilling out over my torso and for a moment… nothing.

Then, the feeling of my blood rushing out of my burst arteries and my heart being pierced came back, even more painful than before. I sat up straight and grabbed my chest as if I could push it back together.

But…

When I opened my eyes, I could see again. I still felt the pain in my destroyed eye, but it worked and wasn’t inside my mouth. I looked down to see that my chest was still whole and my uniform hadn’t been torn.

Then why did I feel all this pain?!

I stood up slowly, still clutching my chest in surprise and a vain hope the pain would lessen. I turned to look at Chihaya…

And saw her playing with my body.

Just that moment, I remembered something a spirit had said to Naana. There was no escape from this school, even in death. Heaven was closed to us. When we died… we’d feel the pain of death forever.


End file.
